Found and Lost
by Deastrumquodvicis
Summary: Thomas Veil, now in Salt Lake City, saves a long-lost lover from a robber.


My name is Thomas Veil. Or so I thought. One day I'm a photographer who's traveled the world; the next I'm in a mental institution with no friends, no job, no family, and a good measure of paranoia. Pursued by a government organization with no name, I wandered around the country, taking odd jobs and obsessing over my pursuers, trying to find out who, what, and why.  
>I took a photograph of the hanging execution of four men in the South American jungle; members of the US military stand by, watching. I didn't know it at the time, but that picture would turn my normal life into a waking nightmare. The Organization wanted my negatives, and would stop at nothing to get them.<br>So I took the negatives and made sure I knew where they were, sometimes on me, sometimes in a "safe place", but never in anyone else's custody. After the betrayal of my wife, Alyson, I learned not to trust anyone.  
>But then I found a glimmer of truth in the darkness of lies: Hidden Agenda, my troublesome photograph, was not taken in the jungle, but about five miles outside of DC. Naturally, I began to wonder what the picture really was of, or if my memories of having taken it were real.<br>My queries took me to Heritage House in Washington DC, a front for an FBI operation. From the director of Heritage House, I learned what I had suspected-the negatives I had were of a heavily doctored photo. After having been shot, the director helped me on the path to the next stepping stone, an operative codenamed Gemini. Turns out we were one in the same. I was the Gemini project, an experiment in brainwashing.  
>Who I really am, or was, I don't know, but I intend to find out.<p>

After my troubles in Denver, I can't think of anywhere else to go, so it's off to Salt Lake City. The towering spires of the Mormon temple remind me that I don't have anywhere to hide, and I can't turn anywhere for peace in my current predicament.

It's ten at night when I walk into the nearest car rental lot, because I mainly hitchhiked and took buses to get to the city, and I needed a car or some form of transport. I bump into a beautiful blonde as she leaves the store, catching myself gazing longingly at her, then correcting myself as I remember that I'm married. (Was married?)  
>There is a brunette at the counter, wearing glasses and looking down at the moment. Without looking up, she asks:<br>"Can I help you?"  
>"Oh, my Go…d…" I park myself on the waiting bench.<br>The woman looks up. I see nothing but shock on her face, disbelief in her eyes, a perfect mirror of what I must certainly look like at this very moment.  
>"Tom?"<br>"This cannot be happening. No way. No. No, no, no, no, no, it's not real, Tom, it isn't real and you know it. She's dead. She can't be-for Pete's sake, you're dead!"  
>"Tom, I don't know what to say, except that I'm not dead."<br>"Laura…I can't…this can't…how?"  
>"It would be a long story. I don't really want to go through it all."<br>"Oh, Tom, pull yourself together. What happ-"  
>"I said I don't want to talk about it right now. And please stop talking to yourself! It's…weird."<br>"But-"  
>"Are you going to rent a car or aren't you?"<br>Exasperated, I put my hands to my head.  
>"Laura, I-"<br>"Tom, no. You left me. Simple as that."  
>"I thought you died. What else could I have done?"<br>"Made sure of it. Tom, every day in the hospital I thought about you. Every day since that day ten years ago, I have missed you. You left me. I loved you."  
>"Why the past tense, sweetheart?"<br>"Don't call me that."  
>"Why not?"<br>"My husband might get jealous."  
>"Well, forget-" Her husband. It takes a minute for it to sink in, and when it does, I have to go sit down again. "Husband…"<br>"Yes, Tom, I'm married. His name is Jack. We have twins. Alyson and Tom."  
>"There's irony."<br>"Alyson is his sister's name. Tom is named after you."  
>"Alyson's my…wife's…name. Hence the irony."<br>"You're married, too, then."  
>"She isn't like you, Laura. She's…she betrayed me. I thought about you all the time, too, oh, God, you don't know how painful it's been for me."<br>"I'm sorry, Tom, I tried to find you, to call you, I asked about you, for goodness' sake, I even did a people search on you to try to find some way of contacting you, but I didn't find anything. I looked whenever I could. Tom, I don't think I've ever stopped loving you. Even when I found out that you'd been admitted to a mental hospital."  
>"That was more than a year ago. A year and a half ago, I think."<br>"You think. And you ran away from Calaway."  
>"It's not like that, Laura. It's not what you think."<br>"Then what was it? What am I supposed to believe?"  
>"If I told you, you'd think I'm paranoid and that I was just making it up."<br>"Try me."  
>"The head doctor and probably a large portion of the others were working for a government program that erases people's lives. I just happened to be the intended victim of the week."<br>"I believe you, Tom."  
>I blink. It's not supposed to be that easy.<br>"What?"  
>"I believe you. I know you're telling the truth because you aren't the sort of man to lie, and I don't think you're crazy."<br>Just then, a shady-looking man came in. He walked up to Laura, pulled out a gun, and demanded money from the counter in a thick Brooklyn accent.  
>"Hey, do you mind?" Oh, what are you doing, Tom?<br>"Whatcha think you're doin'?" Then I find myself looking down the barrel of the pistol.  
>"I dunno, maybe defending the innocent."<br>"It ain't your place. Fork over the dough, lady!" He swings the gun back to Laura.  
>"Laura, don't do it. Don't give him what he wants."<br>"You stay outta this!" Then my mind registers a sudden shot an instant before I hit the ground. Why do I always have to put my foot in it? And then blackness comes.

The sounds of an oxygen machine are the first noises to welcome me back to the waking world. Then I open my eyelids and try to move my arm.  
>Great. IV. Oxygen tube. And my right side from the shoulder to the waist, in pain.<br>Awkwardly, I manage to turn on the news.  
>"In other news tonight," comes the woman's voice, "An armed robber at a car dealership got more than he bargained for as a customer decided to fight back on behalf of the saleswoman."<br>Now they're showing the surveillance tape. There's the bit where I get shot. Laura comes over, crying over my limp form. And then the man shoots her.  
>"Unfortunately, the robber got what he wanted, and left, shooting both people, killing one. The other is in critical but stable condition in the hospital. Any information leading to this man's arrest-" I switch it off. I don't want to hear any more.<br>No. Dead. She's dead again. And I was powerless to help her. Again. Why? What did I ever do to the universe? How did I deserve this?

My next three weeks are spent in utmost sorrow. When I'm finally discharged from the hospital, I am allowed to attend her funeral. It is there that I meet Jack and the twins. I can tell already that five-year-old Alyson is going to look just like her mother. Just like her mother.  
>The twins are too young to truly understand what's happening, but they nonetheless feel it, and as the casket is lowered into the ground, little Alyson drops a daisy into the grave.<p>

On the way to Jack's house, the radio is on, and I catch a few lines of Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles. Luckily for me, he turns the radio off.  
>We don't talk much in the car, but little Tom stares out the window, crying, hoping against hope, as I did ten years before, that Laura would come back, knowing, or feeling, that it was impossible.<br>I find out that (irony of ironies) Jack's sister Alyson just happens to be married to a so-called crazy man named Tom, and that she lives in Illinois. Jack had never met Alyson's husband, and Alyson had never met Laura. Jack's sister is my wife. I had personally never known that Alyson had a brother living in Utah (or anywhere else, for that matter), and so this was a bit surprising.

I left their house at about nine thirty at night. I hear the sounds of a mugging in an alley, so, due to insatiable curiosity, I go to intervene.  
>"I swear I didn't do it! I told you-"<br>And the man's distinct Brooklyn accent fills the dank air. "I'm supposed to believe what a stinkin' rat like you says?"  
>And here comes Thomas Veil, the man who jumps in head first.<br>"You got a problem back here?"  
>"Yeah, I'm lookin' at him."<br>"Oh, you mean me?"  
>"Yeah, you!"<br>"What are you going to do about this little problem of yours?"  
>"Grind him up and use him in my lunch."<br>"I feel really threatened right about now. I've faced worse than you, trust me."  
>"Then bring it."<br>And the fray begins. The teenage boy flees for his life, and the two combatants slam each other against the bricks, throw punches and trash bins, he skull-bashes me, I kick his knees, and blood is going everywhere. Then he whips out his trusty gun.  
>"Oh, that's just great."<br>I manage to get the gun from him by bashing his head on the wall, and I push him to the wall. I get within inches of his face.  
>"Nobody, and I mean nobody, kills my wife and gets away with it. You hear that? Nobody!"<br>The man's mouth curls into that twisted grin that all criminals get when they know they have an advantage. He spits in my eye, distracting me, and I feel a sharp blade dig into my left side. I fall to the floor, thinking oh, great, and then one of these days, I'm going to get killed. The man smiles, but then I manage to trip him, and he falls sideways, knocking his head on both the brick walls and the pavement.  
>Police sirens wail, and I manage to dizzily stand. The policeman asks me my name, and I tell him, and then points out that the man who was lying knocked out was the robber from the car dealership, and add that he was also threatening a young teenage boy.<br>"Would you like to be taken to the hospital, Mr. Veil?"  
>"Lead on."<p>

"You're a lucky man, Mr. Veil."  
>"I only wish that were true."<br>"You are. You survived the attack with no organs injured. Except the skin."  
>"If I were lucky, I wouldn't be injured in the first place."<br>"Aww, don't be such a pessimist."  
>Back in the hospital, I am getting stitches for the knife wound to my side. I'm thinking just how pathetic I probably look when in walks Alyson.<br>"Alys-"  
>"Tom, I'm sorry about Laura. I really am. I didn't know about the two of you."<br>"I didn't know about your brother."  
>"Tom, just remember, there's always someone who loves you, always. And no matter where you are, that person will always love you for who you are inside." And then she leaves.<p>

Leaving the hospital, I have a mental collage of what has happened in the past few weeks, how life hasn't been exactly good for me, and the chain of events that started it. Walking in a random direction, I hope that things look up for me, knowing somehow that they'll only get worse.


End file.
